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Friday, September 30, 2005

Charitable waste: "Charitable waste
Oriental Morning Post
2005-10-01 Beijing Time
THE charity feast itself is a waste of money, said the Oriental Morning Post on Tuesday.

The biggest feast of Puhn Choi in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, will be held on October 26 at a stadium. Companies have to pay up to 50,000 yuan (US$6,172) a table, and the entrance fee is 550 yuan per person. "

Amid dwindling government support and declining populations, grassroots philanthropy has raised billions of dollars for healthcare, education and community support in rural areas, according to a report commissioned by New Ventures in Philanthropy a Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers initiative."

Most people in Britain support charities. Two-thirds of us make voluntary donations to help pay for a huge range of good causes every month. But we tend not to tell even our family and friends who we support, and hardly anyone knows how much anyone else is giving.

The Giving Calculator is a simple tool to help you see how your giving compares to the national average."

Editor's note: Bryce Jordan served from 1983 to 1990 as Penn State's 14th president. Now president emeritus, he lives in retirement in Austin, Texas. As part of the university's sesquicentennial observance, he reflects on some of the key issues that made his presidency unique.

In part two, he discusses The Campaign for Penn State, the university's first-ever comprehensive fundraising effort that ultimately raised $352 million in gifts from alumni and friends."

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- America is still minting millionaires at a steady pace, but long-term wealth accumulation and careful planning now trump some of the quick fortunes generated by stocks, bonds and other investments in years past.
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That's the message Wednesday in the latest report on affluence from researcher TNS, which showed the number of millionaires in the United States jumped 8% to 8.9 million, from 8.2 million a year ago.

The firm's Affluent Market Research Program considers millionaires to be households with more than $1 million in net worth, excluding the primary residence.

'Unlike 2004, year-to-date stock market growth did not fuel the increase in millionaire households,' the report said. 'These households did not become rich overnight.'

In 2004, the number of millionaires spiked by 33% from the prior year, more than double the next biggest jump in recent years."

Volunteering can give you many new skills, build up confidence and increase your overall employability. Plus it's packed with the feel-good factor. So why doesn't everyone do it?

Kate Hilpern
The Guardian

Last year, research found that 11 million people in the UK were waiting to be asked to volunteer, but many found it difficult to identify an opportunity that met their interests and availability. This, explains Justin Davis-Smith, deputy chief executive of Volunteering England (VE), is why 2005 was selected as Year of the Volunteer."

By the time she was 35, Tracy Gary had already given away more money than most of us will ever have.

'Philanthropy is a strategy to redistribute wealth and skills,' she said.

Gary inherited a portion of the Pillsbury family fortune in the early 1970s at the age of 21. In the next 14 years, she donated about $1 million to various charities. Still an active donor at the age of 54, Gary tours the country, speaking to professional women about how to be smart about imparting their wealth."

Within a few years, though, Mr. Lett ran into legal trouble and last year the Ontario Securities Commission sanctioned him with a 10-year trading ban and a 15-year prohibition from serving as an officer or director.

Now, a group of American investors, who allege Mr. Lett defrauded them out of $10-million, are suing Ridley over the donation. The investors claim the money belongs to them and they want it back."

Two years after the National Do Not Call Registry took effect -- and with more than 100 million numbers enrolled -- dinner-time conversations are still being interrupted by telemarketing calls.

Regulators say the system is working, but a recent random survey (by telephone) by the Customer Care Alliance, a Virginia-based consortium of three customer-relations consultants, found that 51% of registered consumers say they're still getting calls they think the list is supposed to block. Lois Greisman, the Federal Trade Commission official in charge of the registry, says the agency receives a 'steady flow' of between 1,000 and 2,000 complaints about telemarketers every day."

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 28, 2005--Kintera(R), Inc. (Nasdaq:KNTA), the leading provider of software as a service to the nonprofit and government sectors, today announced the company's 2005 Kintera/Luth Nonprofit Trend Report was named the winner of the 'Best ePhilanthropy Research Project' in the first International ePhilanthropy Awards. The report, which was released in June 2005, was recognized for its research regarding online philanthropy behavior, including benchmark findings about online donation habits of the U.S. population.

According to the study by Kintera and Luth Research, Inc., a veteran online market research firm, online donations in the U.S. in 2004 exceeded $3 billion -- up 58 percent from $1.9 billion in 2003. The survey results also indicate that more than 8.6 million U.S. households gave online donations in 2004 and more than 65 percent of all donors visit at least one of the websites of the nonprofit organizations to which they give.

The complete Kintera/Luth Nonprofit Trend Report can be downloaded by visiting www.kintera.org/Kintera-LuthReport2005."

BATON ROUGE — In an effort to reunite New Orleans-area nonprofits and discuss the future, the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations will meet with affected nonprofits from 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday in Baton Rouge.

CommunitySpringfield, MO - infoZine - Blunt kicked off his 'Show-Me Solutions' initiative at the Kid's Caf�in Springfield where local school children are given a free hot meal after school. Kid's Caf�is managed by the Ozarks Food Harvest, a charitable organization that provides food for the needy in 35 Southwest Missouri counties. The Ozarks Food Harvest relies on contributions from private citizens and local businesses to service its clients."

CompuMentor responded to the hurricane Katrina disaster in a number of ways. Including pulling on some volunteers to put together a Disaster Recovery Manual.

We aimed for speed in order to meet the immediate needs of small and medium nonprofits whose disaster recovery planning had been overwhelmed by the scale of what hit them. But now it's out there we want to release a second improved version.

We're focusing on correcting errors, filling gaps, redesigning/rewriting chapters that don't make as much sense as they should, and providing more resources.

While the catalyst for this was hurricane Katrina, it would be great if the manual covered all sorts of disaster recovery situations.

At the moment there's just the one big PDF to download and read through."

A free umbrella arrived in my mailbox the other day, wrapped in flame-red plastic, the most extravagant of any unsolicited gift I've received from a group tugging at my private sense of charity.

Painted with a 19th century Parisian street scene, that umbrella hardly reflects my personal flair. I am unlikely ever to carry it but disinclined to toss a perfectly good tool. If a guest happened to be leaving my apartment during an unexpected downpour, she could shield herself with that umbrella and not bother returning it. She could pass that umbrella to the next unprepared, uncovered person. The umbrella got dropped into the household umbrella bin, and the gifting charity's self-addressed, postage-paid envelope onto the recycling heap."

National Post: "Stronach says she is giving Cabinet salary to charityOTTAWA - Human Resources Minister Belinda Stronach excused herself from Cabinet discussions this summer on eight separate subjects -- especially those related to the auto industry -- because of her family's vast business holdings. Over the weekend, Ms. Stronach's business assets were listed on the Web site for Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro after the Cabinet minister signed a formal recusal agreement. Parliament's wealthiest MP told reporters after Question Period yesterday she is donating her Cabinet minister's $200,000-plus annual salary to charities while she put the money from sold shares in the bank for savings"

As the cost of attending college continues to rise, Penn State students are taking a stand through the new Student Philanthropy Council to acknowledge those who have given back and contributed to the Penn State community.

Lauren Steinberg, the group's adviser, said the council would serve as a student-run organization to help create awareness for philanthropy at Penn State."

The Panel on the Nonprofit Sector invites the nonprofit community to comment on the draft recommendations it is considering for inclusion in a special supplement to the Final Report it submitted to Congress in June 2005. In that report, the Panel presented more than 120 recommendations for strengthening the governance, transparency, and ethical conduct of charitable organizations.
"

The annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund take place on Sept. 24-25. Conditionality has become one of the central issues in international aid. Under growing pressure to produce development results, donors continue to struggle with the use of conditions attached to aid.
"

In new program sponsored by local philanthropist, university students are charged with giving away $10,000 to a good cause. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Date published: 9/26/2005

By KELLY HANNON

Turn 28 college students loose with $10,000 and see where the money goes.

At the University of Mary Washington, a new economics of philanthropy and nonprofit management class does exactly this, with one caveat: The money must go to a Fredericksburg-area nonprofit organization at the end of the semester."